Biracial Adoption: A Family Choice In Love And Controversy, The Home Is What Matters

August 11, 1985|By Elizabeth Maupin of The Sentinel Staff

Gary and Beverly Miller could have adopted a healthy white baby. So could David and Bonnie Shaw; so could Sam and Leslie Knopf.

But the Knopfs (who asked to be identified by pseudonyms), the Millers and the Shaws, all white, middle-class couples, chose a different path -- adoption of a biracial child. Each couple made a choice often considered controversial, a choice often misunderstood.

''We want to make it clear that we didn't want to adopt a biracial child in order to make any kind of statement about racial equality,'' David Shaw has said. ''We adopted a biracial child because we wanted one.''

At a time when a declining birth rate, the legalization of abortion and a greater acceptance of childbirth outside marriage have made healthy white babies less available to those trying to adopt, adoption of biracial children has become, to many people, an obvious alternative. Generally the offspring of unwed white mothers and black fathers, biracial children are but one part of a group called by adoption counselors ''special-needs children'' -- children who, because of their race, their age or their health, are not easily placed in permanent homes.

The number of biracial adoptions is not great. In 1975, the last year for which the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare gathered such statistics, more than 100,000 children were adopted, but fewer than 1,000 across racial lines.

To some, placing special-needs children in any good home is a blessing. But to others, black and half-black children belong in black families, and their placement elsewhere amounts to what one organization calls ''institutional racism'' and ''cultural genocide.''

Such phrases are far from the minds of such Central Florida couples as the Millers, the Shaws and the Knopfs, all of whom believe that a good home for a child is more important than the color of that child's skin.

Gary and Beverly Miller could not give birth to their own child. Beverly, 32, has a brain tumor and has been treated with chemotherapy and radiation; doctors advised her that a pregnancy was out of the question. The Millers, who moved to Maitland two years ago from Columbus, Ohio, had always wanted a large family, and as they approached their 30s (Gary is now 34), they did not want to wait for years to become parents.

When a Columbus adoption agency told them that the wait for a healthy white child would be up to six years, the Millers reconsidered their options.

''Why should we love a biracial or black child any less than a white child?'' Beverly asked.

''These children were already there,'' Gary said. ''If we could help the situation, why shouldn't we?''

Two years after they applied for adoption, the Millers were given Angie, now 4. After they moved to Maitland, they applied to Children's Home Society, one of the larger private agencies in Orlando, for another child; 10 months ago, they got Jason, now 11 months old.

Both the Millers said that their families' reactions were not as positive as they would have liked.

''At the time, at least from my parents' standpoint, we were pretty much on our own. A year later, that began to change, and now things have pretty much swung around.''

Others, too, have reacted with varying degrees of negativity. One neighbor initially was cold to the children; strangers in restaurants have stared. None of it, though, has bothered the Millers very much.

''The more experienced I am with it,'' said Gary, ''the more I'm convinced that a lot of it is in my own head. Sometimes you can be oversensitive.''

But those little evidences of prejudice felt by the Millers led David and Bonnie Shaw to ask that the name of the city in which they live not be revealed. The Shaws, who moved recently from Orlando to a much smaller town, do not want to stir up any anti-black feelings among their new neighbors.

The Shaws had two girls of their own -- Lauren, now 7, and Megan, now 5 -- when they decided to adopt. They began to see adoption as a way of giving a home to a child who needed one.

The Shaws asked Children's Home Society about getting a black child and learned that, because the organization's policy is to place a child in a home in which he or she feels most comfortable, black children generally were not placed with white parents. Biracial children, however, were another story.

''Four weeks later, they called and said they had Sarah,'' said David, 32. Less than a year later, Megan, Lauren and Sarah, now 2 1/2, acquired an adopted brother, Adam, now 20 months.

The Shaws' families eventually came to support the adoptions, but remarks from strangers still sting.

''Middle-aged white men will sometimes go out of their way to let me know what they think of my situation,'' said Bonnie, 31. ''They've called me names. One child told Lauren she had a nigger for a sister.''